Born to Be Trouble

by Sheila Jeffries

  Then Marcus gave an appreciative little cheer and clapped his hands. ‘Magnificent!’

  ‘No one asked your opinion, Marcus.’ Penelope looked shell-shocked.

  ‘And – just for the record’ Tessa added, ‘I have not agreed to marry Paul.’

  CHAPTER 10

  The Ring

  Tessa lay awake in her narrow bed in Nottingham Place. It was three o’clock in the morning. Her window was open, with a sooty wind wafting the curtains. She could hear the gurgle of rain falling on the street and the scrabbling of mice picking holes in the trash bags stacked on the landing outside her door. There were mice in her cupboard under the sink, squeaking fiercely as they scurried along the pipes and out into the stairwell.

  She’d learned to disentangle meaningful sounds from the constant roar of the London traffic; the lone quacking of a duck in the park; the wind in the plane trees; the rain. Always it was the rain that loosened the confines of the city, allowing her to dream, to go home to Monterose, to the garden of The Pines where the rain would be pure and silver, scattering rhinestones over the hedges, turning the Mill Stream to a foaming torrent twisting around the roots of willow and poplar. Rain falling on her abandoned field, seeping through the grass and into the lane where the puddles pulsed with rings from the raindrops. At home she would hear the unearthly yelping of foxes, the hooting of owls, and the voices of trees. As a child she had learned that the four winds had different personalities. The South wind tasted of orange groves; the North wind smelled of snow and the ruffled fur of wolves; the East wind was bitter and smoky. Tessa’s favourite was the West wind, tasting of sea-salt and heather, its voice a symphony of psalms from distant islands. Together, the wind and the rain brought to her the world beyond London, its rolling blues and greens, its cottages with coral lights in windows. The West wind made her homesick.

  Tessa got up and sat in the open window, a candlewick dressing gown wrapped around her shoulders. She tried to taste the sea on the West wind as it freckled her cheeks with rain. It tasted sour. Tasted of London.

  The ache of homesickness filled her body and soul, as if there was no room for any other kind of feeling. She badly needed to talk to Dorothy. The Samaritans were open day and night. She didn’t want to use the tenants’ payphone in the hall. It was too public. Everyone in the building would eavesdrop on her distress. Going out would involve getting dressed and braving the night streets to find a phone box. Not worth the risk of getting mugged.

  She switched the light on, stuck a shilling in the meter, and lit the gas ring. There was no kettle in her bedsit, so she boiled water in a chipped enamel saucepan and made hot chocolate, adding some Carnation milk from a tin. With her hands wrapped around the mug she sat in the window again, watching the street light making orange cobwebs in the filigree branches of a birch tree. She could see its tiny catkins and the swelling buds on the ends of twigs. It was nearly Easter. Summer was coming. And how could she bear to be in London?

  Everything. Every single thought was a sharp pain of longing.

  One more week of the school term. Then holiday. A black hole.

  No Easter eggs. No picnics in the bluebell wood. No going out in the morning sun and finding a hen proudly parading a clutch of newly hatched chicks. The joy of picking one up and feeling it tremble in her cupped hands, seeing the black spark of its eye, hearing its plaintive cheeping.

  Everything hurt. Everything.

  I have to escape, Tessa thought. From London, and from myself. Find the spring. And the light on the water.

  She spent an hour writing a poem, trying to sculpt with words a picture of her longing. She felt the dawn long before it came, and it was the dawning of an idea. A rescue. She had to rescue herself. Again!

  Excited, she took a map down from the bookshelf and unfolded it on the bed. The way out of London. The way to a beach where the West wind made sparkles on the waves. Her eyes were drawn to the south. Brighton! She’d go to Brighton. It was Saturday. But Paul wanted her to walk in Regent’s Park with him. After lunch, he’d said. Tessa frowned. It didn’t feel right. She’d leave him a note, pinned to the door.

  At five in the morning Tessa finally went back to bed and slept heavily until she was woken at eight o’clock by a pigeon tapping on the window with his beak. She smiled and got out of bed to give him some biscuit crumbs. The pigeon had become a friend. Sometimes he would even walk in through the sash window on his little pink feet. He listened attentively to everything Tessa told him, making mysterious crooning sounds in his throat and watching her with one bright eye. She called him Toby.

  ‘I’m going to Brighton!’ she told him as he walked about on the crumbling window sill, his plumage iridescent with pinks and greens in the morning sun.

  She lit the gas ring and made herself a fried egg sandwich and a coffee. Then she fished out the sea-green bikini, rolled it in a towel and put it into her rucksack with half a packet of chocolate digestives and a banana. She scribbled a note for Paul, folded it and pinned it to the outside of her door with a brass drawing pin.

  With an old forgotten feeling of freedom and adventure, she swung her rucksack onto her back and headed for Victoria Station.

  ‘Where the hell have you been?’ Paul was standing, white-faced, in the street as Tessa returned from Brighton. Her eyes were bright and her complexion rosy and fresh from a day in the sun on Brighton beach. Her pockets were full of interesting chalk pebbles and sun-bleached bits of driftwood. She felt happy, until she saw the look on Paul’s face.

  ‘Brighton!’

  ‘Brighton.’ Paul digested the word as if it was a jail sentence.

  ‘What’s wrong with Brighton?’ Tessa felt her smile disappearing under a stone. But she was unprepared for what happened next.

  ‘THIS is what’s wrong with Brighton!’ Without warning, Paul slapped her across the side of her face, so hard that she fell sideways against the railings. Stunned and bewildered, she slid to the floor, clutching her face. She stared wildly at the man who was supposed to love her.

  Blood was running from a cut above her eye where she had hit the railings. ‘Look what you made me do,’ she yelled, getting to her feet. ‘How dare you hit me in the street like that, Paul. I haven’t done anything wrong! I had a lovely day in Brighton. What’s got into you?’

  ‘How dare YOU go swanning off to bloody Brighton?’ Paul shouted. ‘I thought we agreed to walk in Regent’s Park. I came all the way here and waited around for nothing.’

  ‘I left you a note.’

  ‘I don’t want your bloody note.’ Paul fished it from his pocket, screwed it into a ball and flung it into the gutter. The sight of Tessa cowering away from him seemed to ignite another volley of rage. Aware that people in the street were watching him, he lowered his voice to a rasping whisper and moved his face close to hers. ‘YOU are going to let me in, make me a coffee, and bloody well explain yourself, woman.’

  ‘Don’t call me woman.’

  ‘Bitch then! BITCH.’

  Tessa felt scorched by the closeness of his anger. What had she done? She didn’t understand. And why didn’t he care that her eye was bleeding and she was now shaking violently? Terrified, she backed against the railings and began to sidle up the steps. Get to the door, then shut him out was her plan. She didn’t want to be alone in her room with Paul in that mood.

  The communal front door was usually left open and off the latch during the daytime, then locked at night. Tessa paused on the top step, pressing a screwed-up tissue to her wounded eyebrow. Then she moved quickly, in through the door, whipping around to shut Paul out, her hand on the Yale lock, her heart pounding with fear. But she hadn’t moved fast enough.

  ‘Oh no you don’t.’ Paul heaved at the door. ‘You are NOT going to shut me out, you bitch.’

  They scuffled, one each side of the heavy old door, and Tessa fell backwards, screaming. ‘No, Paul. No. Get away from me. Leave me alone.’

  ‘What’s going on here?’ The landlord came up the st
eps from his basement flat in a cloud of sour-smelling pipe smoke. For once, Tessa was glad to see him, even though he was glaring fiercely at both of them. She pulled herself up and clung to the hall table. ‘Is this man hassling you?’ he asked, looking up at Paul with bulldog eyes. Paul was visibly crumpling in the presence of this solid little man who stood there calmly in a pair of leather slippers, baggy trousers held up with braces, and a nicotine-impregnated tweed jacket with very square shoulder pads.

  Paul’s eyes were silently threatening Tessa, daring her to speak.

  ‘Will you please tell me what’s going on?’ repeated the landlord. ‘This is my house, and I will not have this kind of rumpus.’

  Tessa’s voice trembled. ‘I just came back from Brighton – I’ve done nothing wrong.’

  ‘Alcohol,’ said the landlord. ‘It’s a curse on society.’

  ‘I haven’t been drinking,’ Tessa said, and burst into tears. ‘Why should I have to stand here like a cornered animal? I’ve done nothing wrong.’

  ‘That’s right, turn on the tears,’ said Paul nastily.

  The landlord looked at him contemptuously. ‘Right – you – out. Out of my house and don’t come back. Go on. Go. There’s the door.’

  Paul backed away from the bulldog eyes. Throwing Tessa a look of seething resentment, he left in two long strides and the Yale lock snapped shut behind him.

  ‘And you . . .’ The landlord turned to Tessa, his voice gentler. ‘. . . I suggest you go upstairs and get that eye seen to. Have you got some first aid?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, go on then. And make sure this never happens again.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Tessa said. ‘I couldn’t help it – and I have to work on Monday!’

  The landlord looked at her hard, as if he wanted to say a lot more. He relit his pipe and blew clouds of smoke into the hall. ‘I’m not going to get involved. As long as you’re all right. Are you?’

  ‘Yes – thanks – I’ll be fine,’ Tessa said, but she didn’t feel fine. She felt abused. She climbed the stairs on trembling legs, glad to reach the sanctuary of her small bedsit. Still with the tissue pressed to her eyebrow, she curled up on the bed and stared out at the grey London sky. She’d come home from Brighton feeling good, her mind full of pictures of the sparkling water and the steeply shelving pebble beach. Paul had taken it all from her. He had sucked the joy from her spirit.

  Tessa spent Sunday in a state of tension. Paul had a habit of lying in bed until mid-morning so she felt safe for the first few hours of the day. She arranged her Brighton beach treasures on the window sill where the early sunshine lit the strangely shaped chalk pebbles. Dad would love them, she thought. I could get him a big lump of chalk to carve. And again – the homesickness. What would her dad say about the cut over her eye? What if he knew about the way Paul had treated her? He’ll never know, she vowed.

  She went for an early walk in Regent’s Park and gazed at crocuses opening their saffron-hearted blooms to the sun. Was it over with Paul? Would she have to admit to failure? Failure to sustain a relationship? Failure to be a normal person, a normal girl who wanted marriage and babies. Kate had only spoken to Paul on the phone and thought he was wonderful, and as for the wedding bells, it was Kate and not Tessa who had stars in her eyes. I can’t let her down, Tessa kept thinking. Her walk around the park was like a drawing she had studied by her favourite artist, Paul Klee. An ink drawing entitled Flight from Oneself. It was how her walking felt now. Harder and faster, more and more desperate, but never, ever fast enough or strong enough to escape from herself. The old, creative Tessa was trapped inside a new chrysalis built from endless skeins of people-pleasing and duty and responsibility. It hung by a thread in a hard dark corner.

  Mid-morning, she returned to Nottingham Place, dreading to find Paul angrily waiting. But he wasn’t there. Perhaps he’d given up on her, she thought, with mixed feelings. She paid her rent and the bulldog eyes looked at her through the hatch in an unfriendly way. ‘Make sure that young man comes and goes quietly in future,’ he said. ‘Otherwise I’ll be giving you a week’s notice.’

  Tessa blanched. Dumped by Paul. Chucked out of her flat. It spelled failure. She’d made the tiny room into a cosy nest. The sun streamed through the window, and there was Toby, her little pigeon friend. ‘Please don’t do that,’ she said. ‘I really like it here and I need to stay.’

  The bulldog eyes misted over as he searched the light in her pale blue gaze. Light was something he’d given up on long ago. The moment of eye contact was fragile, but Tessa sensed the shadow of unhealed pain in him. She felt he liked her, but no longer knew how to express the concept of liking someone. It was a soul thing, a hopeless longing for an angel. All his angels are cardboard, she thought, watching his fat fingers signing the rent book. He handed it back with a dismissive grunt.

  She spent the rest of Sunday reading and sleeping, snacking on biscuits and coffee. There was no sign of Paul.

  But in the morning, in the Monday rush hour, Paul was waiting for her outside Baker Street tube station, shamefaced, a gift-packed red rose in his hand. ‘Forgive me, darling. I don’t know what came over me. I shouldn’t have hurt you like that.’ He reached out and tenderly ran a finger over the cut above her eye which she’d tried to disguise with makeup. ‘Friends?’ he asked as she stared at him.

  ‘Friends,’ she affirmed reluctantly, and watched the light flood back into his eyes. She imagined him as a lonely, embittered old man, like the landlord, with shadows steeped in nicotine.

  ‘Thank God,’ Paul said. ‘I had such a miserable day yesterday. Couldn’t even play music. All I could think of was losing you. I’d be gutted, Tessa. I need you in my life. You’re the best thing that ever happened to me. Please don’t dump me for one flash of bad temper. I’d never, ever hurt you again. Please believe me.’

  ‘It’s okay, Paul – but I’m on my way to work.’

  ‘Yeah – I know. Give us a kiss then.’

  He kissed her with unusual tenderness, and Tessa felt an odd mix of relief and confusion. The brilliance of her day in Brighton sped past her like a lost window of freedom, closing now, as if she’d been a canary let out of its cage, just for one day, to taste the salt wind, to discover the wings within her soul, wings that could fly, only to creep home at the end of the day to the safe cage.

  I don’t hate Paul, she thought as she sat on the tube train, jammed in with remote-eyed commuters. I just don’t love him the way I loved Art. And now I don’t trust him either.

  Tessa had always wanted jewellery. Wood and plastic wouldn’t do. It had to sparkle. As a child she’d played for hours with her mother’s necklace of clear faceted crystal, especially if she could have it out in the sunshine, letting it slip through her fingers and make rainbows on her skin and on Jonti’s white fur. ‘It’s only glass,’ Kate told her. ‘You don’t want glass – diamonds are better,’ and she’d shown Tessa her diamond engagement ring and explained how Freddie had given it to her on the edge of the sea when he’d proposed. Tessa loved to gaze into the window of the pawnbroker’s shop in Monterose, and study the rings. She wanted one so much. ‘Certainly not,’ Kate had said firmly. ‘Children don’t have rings.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because rings are valuable and expensive.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because the stones have to be dug out of the rocks.’

  ‘But, Mummy, there’s a green one, and a red one. How can stones be bright colours?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, dear, but they are. That green one is an emerald, and the red one is a ruby.’

  Tessa had frowned, imagining far below her feet the rocks of Planet Earth full of bright, winking coloured stones. ‘Does the Queen have them in her crown?’

  ‘Yes, she does.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because she’s rich, and important.’

  ‘But why, Mummy? Why can the Queen have rubies and emeralds when she’s got arms and legs and a face like me?
Why can’t I have a ring, a real one?’

  Kate would get exasperated and drag Tessa away from the pawnbroker’s window. ‘Don’t be so tiresome.’

  In the Coronation year of 1953, Tessa had spent hours making a St Edward’s Crown out of a Primula Cheese box. Annie had given her scraps of velvet and silk, and sequins. Freddie contributed pipe cleaners for the structure of the crown, and Tessa had glued and stitched, pricked her finger and cried, but worked obsessively until she’d finished the glittering model. Kate still had the lopsided crown on the dresser at home.

  But no one had ever given Tessa a ring. Lucy had one, out of a cracker, with an impressive sparkly ‘stone’, and Tessa had begged and begged to be allowed to have it. Finally Lucy had swapped it for a windmill on Weymouth beach. Tessa had spent an ecstatic hour with the dazzling ring on her small finger, then lost it in the sea, and cried bitterly for the rest of the day.

  Now she had a few sets of ethnic beads, her silver charm bracelet, and the precious amber bead that Art had given her. She still couldn’t pass a jeweller’s window without gazing and dreaming, and one day, in Portobello Road market, a stall appeared with fascinating displays of tumbled gemstones. The dark-eyed man who was selling them had a stone-tumbler running, polishing pebbles. Glad to be on her own, Tessa spent a long time browsing, picking up stone after shiny stone, liking the colours, the mysterious patterns within the translucent gems. They had labels with words she’d never heard, like agate, obsidian, tourmaline and lapis-lazuli. There was a pink one she particularly liked. She didn’t understand how a rock could be pink.

  ‘That’s rose quartz,’ the man said, ‘it’s the kindness crystal.’

  Tessa looked at him in surprise. He was hippyish, she thought, with dreadlocks, silver bangles and a silver necklet with an enormous turquoise stone.

  ‘The kindness crystal? What do you mean?’

  His eyes lit up at her interest. ‘You can use gemstones for healing,’ he said. ‘They have different frequencies and energies. Here – feel this one.’ He put a smooth purple stone into the palm of Tessa’s hand. ‘Close your eyes,’ he advised, ‘it helps your awareness to kick in.’